Earlier this year, the owner of Top Dollar Pawn in Bossier City stocked each of his stores with at least two of the showpiece gorillas. And he’s been having a laugh with them ever since.

“They’re just fun. They’re great advertising, and people love having their pictures taken on them. It’s just kind of a neat thing to have.”

Vice spotted his first gorilla at a North Carolina trade show. Among all the other ornamental display animals and crafts, the big ape just seemed so appealing.

Top Dollar Pawn – with five stores in Louisiana and another one each in Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee – bills itself as the “King Kong of Pawn,” after all.

“I ended up just falling in love with the giant gorillas. I bought a container load of them. It took about six months to get all of them.” Vice sad. “I wanted them right then. We always look for advertising that’s fun and that you get a long residual out of. Those will be out in front of my stores for 20 years.”

Each gorilla has a price tag on it — about $5,000 — but the figures aren’t really for sale, Vice said. Everything in his store has a price, he said, but he’s having too much fun to let them go and they’re too costly to replace individually.

Vice’s Momma didn’t think it was quite so much fun when one showed up on her Swan Lake Road doorstep. “She wasn’t all that crazy about it,” he said.

“But the funny thing was all her neighbors were calling them. Just about everyone on the block gave her a call. It was good for my mom. It gave her something to do,” Vice said. “We brought it back up here, though. It’s one of the three out front.”

One of the gorillas still is AWOL after a second prank. Dr. Mike Banda and his wife won’t give it back, Vice said. “They built a place by their pool for it. They just love it.”

Banda, Vice and their friends meet up weekly at 2Johns Steak & Seafood in Bossier City. Recently, Banda couldn’t make their meal because he was out of town dealing with a death in his family. Vice and friends decided to try to cheer up Banda.

“He just bought a new house there. He hadn’t even moved into it yet. So we went and put one in his driveway,” Vice said. “The guys who took it over for me, they hadn’t even gotten it unloaded yet when kids were coming and playing on it and taking pictures on it.”

Darren Cates, a Top Dollar Pawn employee, was there that day unloading his boss’s prank. “All the kids were outside playing and riding bikes and whatnot, and we had the monkey laid over in the truck. They were following us down the road.

“We stopped up at his house and we’re standing the monkey up,” Cates recalled. “The neighbors come out of the houses, people were driving by and everyone of them was like, ‘Is this a joke?’ Everyone was making a big deal about it. It was hilarious.”

Those gorillas have been spread out throughout the region, and everyone seems to want in on the fun.

“Everywhere you put them, we have that. You come here on Sunday and there’s people playing on them and taking pictures with them,” Vice said. “People are welcome to come by day or night, whether we’re open or closed, and take a picture with them. That’s what they’re for.”

And if people come in and browse the wares after they do, well, all the better.